The most effective advertising for big players

The programmatic campaign was carried out in April this year and lasted a month. Our client has just introduced a new product to the market, so the main goal was to achieve the widest possible reach of advertisements to reach the largest possible group of potential customers. At the same time, however, we did not want to lose quality, so the campaign was to be visible mainly on high-quality portals that were very popular among Internet users. We have been cooperating with our client for a long time, creating other types of campaigns, so we knew his recipient profile, which made it easier for us to choose the means to achieve the set goal.

We decided that the best solution for the client would be to use video ads published on YouTube and in places automatically purchased by the Programmatic system as part of Open Auctions. We supplemented these activities with the Display campaign, using, among others, the Rich Media (Parallax) creation, whose advanced functions increase the possibilities of interaction with the recipient. We also decided to use animated HTML5 banners, which draw the attention of a typical user much better than traditional ones. What effect did the chosen strategy bring? In a month, it managed to reach 22,823,700 views in the most attractive advertising spaces on the Internet.

When it comes to impressions, the natural question may arise as to whether the ad was actually spotted and worked. After all, the creations could appear in a place where the user will not notice them, or they could be scrolled so quickly that it was impossible to register the message. To avoid such doubts, the viewability parameter was created, which determines what percentage of displayed ads was most likely actually seen by the recipient. In the case of the discussed campaign, viewability was at the level of 89%, which means that almost every display was related to the achievement of the assumed goal.

The best surfaces at optimal prices

But let’s move on to a more detailed campaign analysis. As the main goal of advertising was to familiarize as many potential customers as possible with the new product, we focused on different formats and different environments – this maximized the chance of achieving the expected reach. Different activities in different systems and display places, however, always carry the risk of burning through the budget. In optimization activities, we focused mainly on minimizing the cost of impressions without losing their number and, of course, the quality of placements for advertising. We also set a common capping for all formats, i.e. the maximum number of ad impressions per day per user. Thanks to this, it was possible to avoid unnecessary expenses on repeating the message to recipients familiar with it, and thus reach a greater number of new potential customers.

We also took care to exclude low-quality placements on an ongoing basis, which allowed us to maintain high-quality broadcasts throughout the campaign. As a result, the ad was most often displayed in such recognizable and prestigious placements.

Of course, we also paid attention to brand safety, i.e. securing the brand’s reputation. Throughout the campaign, we made sure that advertisements did not appear on websites rich in controversial content or in provocative contexts that could harm the client’s image.

Programmatic campaign costs

The entire month of the campaign is also the work of both our specialists and self-learning algorithms on issues such as budget relocation and bid optimization to achieve maximum reach within the assumed budget. As a result, we significantly reduced the costs of the campaign – a single impression averaged 2 cents for open auctions in Programmatic and 3 cents for the YouTube platform.

– Average CPV Video total: $ 0.03,
– CPV Programmatic Average Open Auctions: $ 0.02,
– YouTube average CPV $ 0.03.

In the case of CPM rates, i.e. per thousand ad impressions, the costs were as follows:

– Average CPM total: $ 3.66,
– YouTube average CPM $ 12.7,
– Average CPM Programmatic Video open auctions $ 3.90,
– CPM Display Programmatic average open auctions $ 2.21.

The total cost of the campaign was $ 83,500 and allowed to reach almost 23 million views. So optimizing your bids resulted in a number of impressions close to the population of Texas. Of course, this does not mean that so many people saw the client’s advertising creations, as promotional videos and banners could be displayed several times to the same users. Still, this is the reach that has significantly helped raise awareness of both the brand and the new product.

It should not be forgotten that Programmatic is an advanced system that collects huge amounts of data about Internet users in order to display advertisements only to those who are likely to be interested in the offer. This is a significant advantage over television or outdoor campaigns, in the case of which we have very little influence on the selection of the target group, and thus the final result of activities.

TikTok is still considered a new and fresh medium, although it was founded in 2016 – less than 5 years is a very long time in this world. However, this does not change the fact that for years TT has remained a bit disregarded in the western world, mainly due to the initial product targeting mainly on the Asian market. Whatever the reasons, 2020 definitely belonged to TikTok. In the first quarter of this year, it was the most downloaded application in the world.

TikTok – what is it about?

TikTok is a mobile application for Android and iOS, thanks to which we can publish short films in various forms. In 2017, the company managing TT, ByteDance, acquired the competitive Musical.ly application for nearly a billion dollars, which also allowed for the publication of short videos, and the available tools allowed for their simple editing – including synchronizing the character’s mouth movement on the video with the lyrics (the platform offered a large database of available songs thanks to an agreement with Warner Music Group and Apple Music). A few months later, Musical.ly was officially merged with TikTok.

The convenient and fast mechanism of editing and sharing films made the platform extremely popular, mainly among the youngest users of the Web, i.e. Generation Z. As a generation from an early age familiar with the use of computers and smartphones, they consume content slightly differently than the previous generations, which had to slowly learn the internet world. The average age of Facebook users is growing, so it seems natural that the youngest generation of internet users is looking for a field of expression elsewhere – in mid-2020, according to Statista, nearly one third of TikTok users in the US were under 20 years old, and over 60% were under 30. It should be noted, however, that TikTok itself does not officially confirm the data on the structure of its community and such data should be treated as an estimate.

As a platform based mainly on mobile solutions (it is possible to use the web interface on computers, but the vast majority of users “tick” on smartphones), TikTok is with users almost anywhere and at any time. It can be considered that TikTok and its mechanics are to some extent a catalyst for the implementation of the Stories format in subsequent social networks – after all, relations were introduced not only a few years ago by Instagram and Facebook, but – quite recently – also by LinkedIn and Twitter. TikTok movies are, in a sense, an extension of this form of communication – fast, dynamic and fleeting.

Pre-publication video on TikTok can be freely edited and processed thanks to built-in tools and filters. The short form of the films (up to a minute, if we use films created directly in the app; films uploaded from external sources may be longer) means that post-production does not require much effort, and watching the video itself is not time-consuming. It is on TikTok that challenges, i.e. various types of challenges, are experiencing their second Internet youth – sometimes sensible, sometimes less of course. We can also find here millions of home music videos, dance routines, charity actions, but also films with painful accidents or vulgar quarrels. Great opportunities to interact with videos posted by other users make the online life on TikTok very dynamic and engaging. According to a study by Businessofapps, in 2019 the average TT user spent nearly an hour a day on the application.

TikTok’s advertising and marketing potential

Due to the large community and the implemented advertising system, TikTok is an application that allows you to promote your own content and display it to a wide audience. As a “new” medium, based on slightly different solutions, it is a field with huge promotional potential, not yet fully exploited by marketers. The number of brands using ads on TikTok, however, is steadily increasing. With Shopify integration, advertisers can also easily promote their products in the app.

The individual TikTok ad formats and their specifications are described in an article on our blog: dimensions of graphics in social media.

TikTok allows brands to collaborate in two ways. The first is the traditional auction model using TikTok Ads Manager, based on very similar principles as, for example, Facebook’s advertising manager. Another solution is the reservation model, under which all activities are planned and agreed with one of the partnership managers cooperating with the platform – this is a solution dedicated to larger campaigns.

Like Twitter, TikTok promotes the most popular hashtags, which are called Trends on this platform. It is an excellent tool for using real-time marketing and “hooking” to the most dynamically growing topics – in short, TikTok seems to be a good place for the brand to always be there where something is going on.

TikTok and controversy

As is usual in the world of social media, several technological and ethical questions arose. TikTok has received heavy financial penalties from the US and South Korea for collecting personal data, separate proceedings are underway in other countries. The platform also struggles to some extent with the difficulty of verifying certain content, especially considering the fact that teenagers are a large proportion of users. In social media, great responsibility comes with great marketing power.